


Noose

by WinchesterWarrenSon



Series: Battle Scars Series [9]
Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Depression, Developmentally Disabled Son Goku, F/M, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, discussion of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-19
Updated: 2015-04-19
Packaged: 2018-03-24 16:50:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3776122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinchesterWarrenSon/pseuds/WinchesterWarrenSon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after "Executive Functioning Isn't Goku's Strong Suit." Goku finds an object in the apartment that he can't identify. Yamcha won't explain. One evening, Yamcha backs out of a previously planned visit to Bulma's place. Goku leaves Yamcha per Yamcha's insistence and turns to Bulma for help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Noose

It was in the bathroom. Goku had been trying to find another bar of soap. (Soap would need to be put on the grocery list, because they were entirely out.) 

Goku didn't know what it was. 

But it was made from rope, and it looked like it went around something. But what, he didn't know, and it wasn't attached to anything. He couldn't think of a single use for whatever it was, but Goku could say that about a lot of things. 

He had never seen it before. Not in real life, not on the TV or in the movies Yamcha liked to watch. It was entirely alien to him. 

There was knocking on the bathroom door. 

"Goku! You've been in there forever! I've gotta pee!" Yamcha said. They only had the one bathroom that all four of them shared. 

The rope-thing had been hiding behind a box of cleaning chemicals. 

Goku opened the door, the rope-thing still in his hand. 

"Sorry. We need soap from the store again." 

Yamcha didn't seem to hear him because his eyes had gone straight to what was in Goku's hands. Goku looked down at the rope-thing, then back at Yamcha, wondering what was wrong. 

Yamcha took a deep breath, but didn't look up from it. Very quietly, he said, "I need you to put that back and make sure Puar and Oolong can't find it. Okay?" 

"Uh... Okay...." 

Goku did as asked, then turned to Yamcha as Yamcha crossed the bathroom and decided he didn't need privacy to unzip his pants and take a piss. Goku stood there awkwardly, not sure if he should leave or if Yamcha was going to talk to him more about the rope-thing. 

Yamcha finished peeing, then went to the sink and seemed confused when he couldn't find the soap. 

"We need soap from the store again," Goku repeated. Yamcha heard him that time. 

"We can wash our hands at the kitchen sink then," Yamcha said, picking up on the fact that Goku felt like he couldn't leave the bathroom with his hands still dirty after years of Chichi getting on his case about that. 

Yamcha didn't say anything about the rope-thing, and Goku waited a while before trying to ask him. It was late at night and Puar and Oolong were both fast asleep. Yamcha was laying his head on Goku's chest, and Goku was threading his fingers through Yamcha's hair. 

"Yamcha?" Goku asked softly. 

"Hm?" Yamcha sounded like he might be half-asleep. 

"What was the rope thing in the bathroom for?" Goku asked. 

He felt Yamcha tense against him. He was quiet for a long while. 

"You don't know?" Yamcha asked, even more quietly than Goku. 

"No." 

The silence was heavy, and Goku wondered if Yamcha had fallen asleep. 

"Can we keep it that way?" Yamcha asked. 

Goku furrowed his eyebrows, wondering what that could be about.... 

"If you want to," Goku said, though he wasn't one hundred percent comfortable with that. But if Yamcha didn't want to talk about it.... 

Time passed, and the rope-thing wasn't in the forefront of Goku's mind. But it occasionally crawled back into his consciousness, like a cockroach that you knew lived in the walls but didn't see very often. 

One day, it crawled back to the front of his mind around the same time as one of Yamcha's bad depression days. 

He didn't want to do anything. Goku couldn't make him get up for most things and spent quite a lot of time just laying there, cuddling with him. 

Goku did his very best to be there for him, but it was rather easy to get very bored when you were just laying there. His legs and arms would get restless, and there was only so much of that cuddling and moving to press his body more into Yamcha's could cure. But he wasn't going to leave Yamcha, unless he asked him to. 

Even though he really wanted to jump up and run around and train and the day was just crawling away from them and depression must be evil if it could make someone waste a perfectly good, sunny day outside.... 

"You're bored." Yamcha said. 

Goku didn't have a real reason to lie. "Yes I am." 

"Did Puar and Oolong go out today?" 

Yamcha was speaking rather slowly. 

"Yeah. They both had work, and they were gonna go do stuff with just the two of them after they got off their shifts." 

Yamcha nodded. "Good for them...." 

". . . Bulma had invited us over this evening. We said we'd go." 

". . . Then you should go." 

"But Yamcha - " 

"I'll . . . be fine. . . . You've wasted enough time laying here with me. The day shouldn't be a complete waste for you." 

Goku frowned. "But I want you to go with me." _I want you to be better already and go with me._

"That's not gonna happen, but you should go." 

"Mmmmm...." 

"C'mon. It's been a while since you've seen her, and she'll be pissed if we just don't show up at all...." 

Goku sat up, looking down at Yamcha laying on the fuuton. He pouted. 

"But I want you to go with me. She'll ask why you haven't." 

"Tell her work came up." 

"That'd be lying." 

Yamcha sighed. "Then tell her the truth." 

Goku furrowed his eyebrows. "I thought you didn't want people to know." 

"I don't, but you do whatever you want to do." 

Yamcha rolled over and stared at the wall instead of the ceiling. Goku sat there, pouting, for quite a while before eventually standing up and moving around the room. 

"Fine, I'll go without you. If you need anything, call Bulma, okay?" 

". . . 'Kay. . . ." 

It felt . . . weird leaving Yamcha like this. If he didn't have work, he hadn't ever just left Yamcha there.... It wasn't like when Chichi wanted chores done and he'd vanish, he knew Yamcha absolutely needed him there when he was like this. But before, Yamcha had always wanted him there. Now . . . now he was asking him to leave. 

Leaving was the right thing to do, right? That's what Yamcha wanted. . . . Wasn't it? 

Goku teleported to Bulma's, leaving Yamcha to his own devices. 

Bulma greeted Goku, and the expected question of where Yamcha was came up almost immediately. 

Goku rubbed the back of his neck, wondering what he was supposed to say. 

"Yamcha's not feeling well, but he told me I should come anyway, even if he couldn't come." 

Bulma frowned and expressed her sympathies, then let Goku inside and had a robot make them some tea. 

"Vegeta's training with Trunks right now. Do you wanna go join them?" 

Ordinarily, Goku would've jumped at that chance, but right then, his mind was preoccupied with thoughts of Yamcha and the reminder about the rope-thing. 

"Actually, I have a question for you." 

"Oh? What is it?" 

"I . . . I don't know what something is, but I don't know what the word for it or even really how to describe it. Yamcha wouldn't tell me what it was." 

"Oh. Huh. Do you think you can draw it?" 

Goku nodded, then Bulma got him a pen and paper. Goku sat down and took the pen and paper and worked on drawing what the rope-thing looked like. When Goku was finished, he showed it to Bulma. Her eyes widened, and her mouth fell open a little bit. 

He wondered why it kept getting that reaction. 

"Goku . . . where did you see this?" 

"It's in the bathroom at home." 

Bulma's eyes snapped to Goku, and Goku couldn't understand the expression she was giving him. 

"What?" 

"Bulma, what is it? Why are you looking like that?" 

"Goku, it's a - it's a noose," Bulma said quietly, as though fearful that others would hear her. "You - you use it to kill - it's used for a very specific purpose." 

Goku only blinked at her, and she took a deep breath. 

"You said Yamcha wasn't feeling well?" 

"Yeah." 

"What . . . what is Yamcha sick with?" 

Goku furrowed his eyebrows a little, his brain getting a little of the fuzzy feeling in his frontal lobe. 

"He calls it depression." 

Bulma's hand flew to her mouth, and she looked scared. Goku wondered if that was how he was supposed to feel about it, but he couldn't figure out why exactly. 

He could put it together that the noose was for killing yourself, and Yamcha had struggled in the past with attempting to kill himself, and Yamcha was depressed, but he couldn't connect the three things together and comprehend why Bulma was getting upset. He didn't understand how Bulma could easily come to the conclusion that Yamcha was suicidal just from knowing about the noose and that Yamcha had depression. 

Bulma got up and reached her hands out for Goku's. She held them and seemed to understand that Goku didn't understand what was happening. 

"Goku, we need to go check on Yamcha." 

Goku hesitated, remembering what Yamcha said when he had told Goku about the scars on his wrists. About why he hadn't opened up to Bulma about it himself. All of a sudden, Goku felt like he had done something he shouldn't have, and he wasn't sure what to do. 

"B-but...." 

"Please. If only just to make sure he's okay." 

Goku hesitated a moment more, then slowly lifted his fingers to his forehead, and he teleported them to the apartment. 

Vegeta felt both Goku's and Bulma's ki signals vanish from inside the house, and he vaguely wondered where they were going before continuing with Trunks's training session. 

Goku and Bulma appeared in the living room area, and Bulma let go of Goku's hands, quickly going in search of Yamcha. 

"Yamcha?" Bulma called out. Goku stayed in the living room for a moment, then followed her through the kitchen and the bedroom. No Yamcha. He had moved from the fuuton. 

A loud thud came from the bathroom, and Bulma ran to the bathroom door. Goku, however, quickly grabbed her and pulled her back and to the side as a ki blast blew the bathroom door off its hinges and sprayed spinters and bits of wood all over the place. Goku protected Bulma with his body, then when the coast was clear, he let her go and they both carefully made their way to the bathroom. 

Yamcha had fallen to the bathroom floor, the noose chord cut and Yamcha tugging the knot in the back loose. Judging from the rope, he had used the ki blast to cut himself down after having changed his mind about it. 

He looked up to see Goku and Bulma standing there, and any relief the man had felt over surviving his ordeal completely left his eyes, and he looked nothing but ashamed of himself. 

Bulma seemed to be robbed of her ability to talk. Only tears gathered in her eyes, and she brought her hands to cover her mouth and nose. 

Goku, on the other hand, went to Yamcha's side. 

"Want any help?" he asked. 

Yamcha reached out for Goku's hand, and Goku helped Yamcha stand up. Yamcha hung his head and refused to look at Goku. 

Goku frowned a bit, then he put a smile on his face and cupped Yamcha's face, bringing his head up to look at him. 

"Hey, look on the bright side. You won!" 

Yamcha's eyebrows furrowed. "Huh?" 

"The fight with yourself. You won! That's worth celebrating, isn't it?" 

"That's . . . one way to look at it." 

Goku's smile widened. "I'm really proud of you!" 

"I tried to kill myself." 

"And you also tried to live. And you are! I'm serious, I'm proud of you, Yamcha. Hey, why don't we celebrate at Bulma's? She made tea and there's always food there!" 

Yamcha managed a tiny smile on his face. There was redness around his neck that his shirt collar couldn't cover up, but Goku could only see it out of the periphery of his vision. He was entirely focused on Yamcha's face and if he was succeeding at making Yamcha feel better. 

"Is that all right, Bulma?" Goku asked real quick, looking over his shoulder. 

She took a deep breath, forced a smile on her face, and nodded. "Of course it is." 

Goku grinned at them both, then pulled them in close and teleported them back to Bulma's. 

Vegeta was in the kitchen when they returned, and he raised an eyebrow at the three of them. His wife was in tears but not quite crying. Yamcha had a red mark around his neck, and Goku was behaving like nothing was wrong except something was off about his expression. 

They ended up having food ordinarily meant for special occasions (but this was a special occasion as far as Goku was concerned), and when Goku and Yamcha left, Bulma collapsed into Vegeta's arms and cried. Vegeta didn't really know what was wrong exactly (though he could take a guess), but he silently comforted his companion. 

Goku worked on fixing the bathroom door, and Puar and Oolong came home and asked what the hell happened. Goku laughed it off and made up a story. 

Instead of going to bed that night, Goku and Yamcha went for a run for as long as Yamcha's leg would allow. Yamcha didn't want to go back to laying in that fuuton after having spent hours upon hours in it already. They ended up falling asleep on the couch after getting back from their run.


End file.
